Post by joustos on Mar 21, 2019 17:06:02 GMT
I don't know if this works, but I will try to attach or copy a post (from 2008). Title: The Eleusinian Mysteries at Pompeii (before79 A.D.) Correction: "toilet" should read "toilette".
(Click on the empty spaces to open the pictures. Some of them are copyrighted. Others can be seen at the sites of Pompeii, the Villa of the Mysteries. etc.)
By "Eleusinian mysteries" I mean mysteries like those
which are typically performed in Eleusis (Attica). They used to be performed in
many parts of Hellas, with variations, and -- with less knowledge on our part
-- in many parts of the Greek Ecoumene of the first millennium B.C., which ran
from Asia Minor to southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and beyond.
When we speak of the Eleusinian mysteries, "mysteries"
does not mean enigmas, secrets, mysterious things, or mysticism in the sense of
ecstasy which various people, including some Christians, strove for. Such
"mysticism" existed in Greece, as in the case of Dionysian
inebriation which , as they believed, made the mind ascend into the Divine
(and is called en-theo-ousia-smos: being-in-god, delirium); in the case of
Sibylline descent into the chthonic Deity, Gaia or Demeter, from whom oracles
are proffered; and in the case of Socrates/Plato who, having learned from
sibyl Diotima, proposed the ascent, by degrees, so as to
reach the realm of immutable realities. Mysticism is a psychic
process and occurrence; the mysteries of the "Eleusinian mysteries"
are so named events of a RITE that must not be spoken of. Revealing them
is tantamount to a crime. The verb Myo^ = I am closed (in the lips or the
eyes), I am silent. (The enactments that one must be silent about are
themselves called "silences", mysteries.)
Strictly speaking, we should avoid the expression "Eleusinian
mysteries" and should say "Eleusinian-type rite (or rites)." A
rite is like a theatrical performance in which things are said, done,
and shown. But in either a theatrical performance or in a religious
rite, the actors or agents do everything in the open and may freely talk
about whatever they do. In an Eleusinian rite, the
essential activities are done in private, and the agents are bound by
silence about them.
THE FRIEZE IN THE TRICLINIUM OF THE VILLA OF THE MYSTERIES IS
A PICTORIAL RECORDING OF THE MAJOR EPISODES OF AN ELEUSINIAN
RITE, WHICH COULD ACTUALLY TAKE PLACE WITHIN THAT ROOM. (That room could have
been used to stage the rite -- for which there was no audience, of course. In
that case, it is a Pompeian domestic Telesterion.) Most importantly,
what transpires during the rite is hidden from view and is thus unlike the
change of color in a leaf or the change of a foot's position. (There are many
occurrences that are hidden from the view
of others, occult ["kryphaios", kryptic],
such as the occurrence of one's own feelings, thoughts, and self.)
A typical agent or actor of an Eleusinian rite is
called a MYSTIS [plural Mystidai], who is
a female. (For general purposes, Mystis is translated as
"mystic".) So, "Eleusinian mysteries" in effect means
"the secrecy-bound practices or enactments of the Eleusinian-type
rite." More specifically, a Mystis is a newcomer into the rite, a person
who is being initiated, admitted, into the rite. (The initiator into the
Mysteries is also called Mystis or "He Mystis," The Mystic.) In the
history of the Eleusinian mysteries in Attica, there is a third phase when
outstanding or famous men were also initiated. The Pompeian frieze is about the
third phase of the Rite. (A male initiate is a MYSTE^S [pl. Mystoi].
However, this name may be used generically for any kind of initiate.)
In the Peloponnese, the officiants in the Rite were to be married women
(whereas in Eleusis, men took over), a fact that is born out of a pregnant
woman in the Pompeian frieze. So, the Pompeian Rite is not directly derived
from the one at Eleusis; it is older than the Attic one and has its own
peculiar features.
What is a basically Eleusinian-type RITE? The essential
protagonists are the divine Demeter [De^me^te^r] and her daughter Kore
[Kore^ , the Maiden] and the initiates, but nobody knows exactly what role the
initiates play. The rite is not a religious rite (with priests or priestesses
and the audience of the faithful) and the initiates are not worshippers or sacrificers
in a temple: this is what so mysterious about the Mysteries, but the Pompeian
frieze provides the answer symbolically. So, we must "read" the
episodes of the rite. (A "sacred rite" or a mystery like the
Eleusinian one used to be called an "AGHISTEIA.")
-- on the left wall of the Triclinium --
(Episode 1). INTROIBO (I shall enter).
A moment ago (p. 100), we peered into the Triclinium (Room 5
or "the Hall of Mysteries" or "Sala dei Misteri" or the
Telesterion) from the main door.
While still standing there, let us look at our left:
(Flickr ph.)
F.decorate(_ge('button_bar'),
F._photo_button_bar).bar_go_go_go(526083363, 0);
There is a little door, on the
left, through which the mystics can enter, one at a time. One entering mystic
is depicted on the frieze, as one can infer from the shape of the heel-side of
her dress.
(Episode 2). LECTIO (The
Reading)
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The mystics or initiates have entered, possibly led by a
"mystago^ge^" (leader of the initiates). Now that they have entered,
a child is reading a scroll, while a lady is holding another scroll in her
hand. [Ignore the standing figure on the right.] Most likely, one of
the readings is of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. [Read
translation into English or into Italian on page 99 of
this weblog.] The doleful lady may have been the leader of the
mystics. (Probably, originally, any officiant of the rite was supposed to be
and was called a "panaghe^s" -- a "perfectly holy [chaste;
venerable] one.")
The Homeric Hymn tells the myth of the abduction of Kore while she
was picking flowers together with her friends and assumes that everybody knows
the nature of Demeter, Kore, and Aidoneus [Hades; sometimes Pluto]; most of
us do not know their nature, and this is the main reason why we don't
understand what the Eleusinian rites are all about.
Young lady picking flowers [from Stabiae]
Let us look briefly at the Greek neolithic cosmogenesis or
theogony. At the beginning were Earth (Gaia) and Sky (Ouranos) locked in a
conjugal embrace wherefore Earth conceived many children and had them in her
bosom. (Earth and Sky are immense and everlasting super-human powers:
in one word, they are gods and the primordial or unbegotten gods at that.)
We move, live, and and have our being in God, in the space opened between
Earth and Sky, as the Stoics and Paul of Tarsus will say later on, but this
space was made possible by the unborn Chronos who cut his father's genitals,
whereby he receded from Gaia. And here is the key to understanding: Some
ancient theologian (speaker of the gods) invented the history of the
universe (the globe or half-globe defined by the sky and the earth), namely the
generation of the gods (Chronos, the Sun and the other planets,
Zeus, and others), and the generation of living things, by describing all the
ingredients of the universe in terms of human copulation and generation. (But
at that time, the females did the generating, while the males were merely
womb-openers.) In so doing, he personified all those ingredients; so, Sky,
Earth, Chronos, Zeus, etc., became -- were thought as being -- anthropomorphic,
man-like, realities and, soon enough, mind, will, and social
behavior were attributed to them. It will not be until the Ionian
Anaximander, the first philosopher, in the 6th century B.C. that
anthroporphism was relinguished in favor of an inquiry into generation:
how things emerge or are born and grow [the process being called
"physis"], and how they perish. (His "Peri Physeos" is the
first book of the human intellect, in contradistinction to the myth-making
mind. It translates roughly as "De Natura" -- "About Being Born
[Emerging].")
Gaia is the mother of all that is born, whether divine or
not. Gaia and Demeter are different names of the same power, though
different in extent -- the genetrix (begetter) and the earth-mother
(especially of vegetation) respectively. Demeter is specifically understood as
the begetter of grain-plants (barley, wheat, etc.), but she has also other
important attributes. What is begotten is made of earth; it is
"demeter" in nature: A grain-plant is a fully grown plant that produces
the seeds of future plant generation. From a seed that has fallen to or is sown
in the ground, a new plant is born. There is a mother-plant (also called
Demeter) and a daughter- plant, the maiden (Kore). So, "Demeter"
represents mature vegetation or specifically grain-bearing vegetation,
while "Kore" represents maiden plants.
There are certain facts of nature that everybody is familiar with:
the seasonal character of vegetation. There is a time of the year when there is
the rebirth of kinds of plants which existed before. The rebirth is due to the
germination of seeds that mother-plants had released. But there is a time of
the year when all vegetation perishes and trees are left leafless and
fruitless. Birth and death on earth. Why do they occur? Was death
instituted by a divine lord as a punishment for disobedient
land-tenants (as the Bible would have it)? Not for the Greeks. Is it
fitting that what is born should also die, as Anaximander said while
trying to decipher the physical process that makes death natural, necessary?
(This necessity has to be explored.) In the age of myth, some Greek theologian
thought that Demeter's daughter (obviously conceived as a human-like person
distinct from a plant) was abducted by Zeus' brother and that when she could
not get her back, Demeter devastated the land. She destroyed all that she
had begotten and even mankind was in danger of perishing, but Zeus intervened
and an agreement was reached: Kore would stay on earth for a half of the
year; for the other half, she would go back to the Underworld, where
Aidoneus had taken her, and reign as Persephone. Thus the Spring
and the Fall of vegetation are explained, though anthropomorphically.
With Demeter, we are in the age of agriculture, when the sown
seeds need water for germination and growth. The times of drought imply death
for the grain-plants which are not supplied by irrigation. So, people in
distress invoked the rain-god (Ouranos, Zeus, or other) to release rain.
It was women that invoked a rain-god, thus acting as representative of
the Earth (Gaia/Demeter), which can become fruitful only by means of
fecundating rain.
The first phase of the Eleusinian rite preserves the
tradition of rain invocation, which was enacted on the sacred road between
Athens and Eleusis. (We have no information about any road procession of
the Pompeian mystics.) In that case, the invoked one was Iacchus (Iakkhos***),
whose identity was forgotten by the time the Attic Rites were
performed. So, some people imagined that he was a son of Demeter's [oddly
enough a male, while the Demeter/Plant is parthenogenic] or was Dionysus under
a different name or was the "Eleusianian Bacchus" (while Bakkhos
and Dionysos were often identified) or heaven knows what. This confusion
may be due to the fact that in some Dionysian rites, there was a procession in
which a picture of Iakkhos was carried, and there is even the verb Iakkhazo^
for the screaming and jubilating of the Maenads or Bacchantes (the female
followers of Dionysus). Anyway, the invocation for rain by the mystics was
indirectly an invocation for the return of Kore, who is the center of the
Eleusinian rite.
Dionysus is the equivalent of Demeter but only for one type of
vegetation, the vine. The wine from the grapes represents blood, which used to
be understood as the life-force of animals and men. So, the concern for the
growth of the vine is practically incidental in that Dionysian
rite or "mystery" that involves the drinking of wine
and the eating of raw -- bloodful -- flesh [o^mophagia]. Nevertheless the
Phrygian Dionysus is the equivalent of the mature grain-plant, for he is
the personification of the grape-filled vine, which is present in most of his
portrayals. Through the mouth of the Greek-scripted Christ, he preaches, "I
am the life [blood]," which would make no sense in an Israelitic context,
where the life that Yahweh infused is breath (psykhe^, spiritus) -- which
is in line with Orphic beliefs. (In the most ancient world, blood is
what the Shades in Hades always seek, for blood is life. But Orpheus
divorced himself from the Dionysian rites which equate blood with life and,
according to one myth, he was decapitated by the maenads. The Thracian
Orpheus or somebody before him re-conceived a shadow-like Shade
as the air that is breathed. A person who dies gives up his spirit or
psyche. But for the Yahvehites, the spirit one gives up does not endure and was
never conceived in the Pythagorean/Platonic ways to begin with.
Jesus possessed no conception of a human soul. )
(Episode 3). THE BEARING OF BREAD
As seen here or in the picture before the last, an officiant is
carrying sliced bread or cake. She is recognizable as such by the wreath she
wears. (She has to be one who was previously initiated, but there is no
specific name for an "accomplished mystic", unless "epopte^s"
-- an accomplished mystic who is a spectator (in the Telesterion) -- was
generically used for the purpose. In fact, one meaning of "epopteo^"
is "I accomplish the highest degree of the initiation," that is, I
complete the rite.)
There is going to be a bread-sharing or cordial
banquet [Agape^] for the mystics, who by now are seating or reclining
in the Triclinium. And what is bread? Bread is something made from the grains
of wheat or barley, the seed released by Demeter. The officiant
is bearing that which is going to be growing as a child, as Kore.
Pompeian bread from 79 A.D. (extra-baked in volcanic ashes)
[The Villa of the Mysteries had its own oven.]
(Episode 4). THE ASPERSION
Demeter (or the officiant acting as Demeter) -- He^ Mystis
-- is seated, with her back toward us. She is assisted by two ladies, one
of whom is pouring water on her hand (or an apparently laurel branch she is
holding), while the other has provided a tray (presumably with sliced bread),
which Demeter is uncovering. She consecrates the bread by a
sprinkling (as it is usually done over animals to be sacrificed, or, more
importantly, as the Sky does to make the seeds germinate), and she will
proclaim to the congregation of the mystics that this is her offspring,
something sacred, to be consumed by them for their own transformation. She will
go and distribute the slices to the mystics. Probably in much earlier times,
plain grains were distributed. (Livia, Augustus' wife, may have been an
officiating Demeter in the Villa of Mysteries, where her statue has been found.
In the statue -- on p. 100 -- she is duly veiled for the performance of the
rite.)
Bread makes the body fleshy; blood (or its surrogate, wine) makes
the body living. But, thus far, bread and wine are understood as nourishments.
If we consider the ingesting of either bread or wine, we can see that we become
[we are consequentially constituted by] what we ingest. Now, the
ancient mythic mind goes a bit further and considers, in macroscopic terms,
the "generation history" or re-generation of flesh and
blood. Wheat is something that is constantly re-born; it is part of its nature
to be reborn, to re-emerge. What is made of the wheat-substance
("demeter") dies, but it contains the seed of its re-birth.
Kore is Demeter re-born. Kore is the ever re-born Demeter. In the rite or
ceremony [Ceres' rite], Demeter, who is called Ceres in Latin,
distributes Kore, and he who ingests Kore becomes an Other Kore. He who
becomes Kore gains re-birth immortality. He who becomes an Other Dionysus
(by drinking his consecrated blood) gains re-birth immortality. These are
occult or "mystical" transformations.
Thus, the Eleusinian Rite (or Demeter/Kore Rite, the
CEREMONY) and the Dionysian Rite are rites for the procurement of immortality
-- in a Greek world where man was practically defined as the mortal one
[Merops or Brotos], in contradistinction to a god, the immortal one [Theos].
(Such a perspective on man and such rites -- respectively for
women and for men -- did not exist among the barbaric peoples.
However, pre-Orphics in the Greek Ecoumene developed also the theory of
body-shade humans, wherefore a shadow-like immortality occurs by nature,
without having to be initiated by Demeter or Dionysus, and Plato will take
pains to demonstrate in various dialogues that the soul [psyche, the
Breath or Life, now identified with or replacing the Shade of a person] is an
immortal (incorruptible, incorporeal), reality. With the coming of the Greek
Christians, who were Pythagorean/Platonic Orphics, the Eleusinian and the
Dionysian Mysteries dwindled and were finally banned.)
The actual communion, by the distribution of the
"consecrated" bread, is not depicted in the Pompeian Telesterion. The
Greeks will transform Jesus of Nazareth (in the Last Supper episode) into a
Demeter-Dionysus figure, and Churchmen will fashion the "Mass"
out of the Eleusinian and the Dionysian rites. The scene of the Last Supper has
been painted to no end, from the Roman catacomb painters to Salvador Dali`. In
Christian churches, however, the consecration table is not the communal dining
table and the celebrant has his back to the congregation, in the manner of
the painted Demeter. (In the "mystical theology" of
the early Greek church, the celebrant of the Mass, the only one to
take communion, literally becomes an Other Christ, "alter Christus"
in the Latin translation I have read. / The Christian baptism changed from
immersion to sprinking, but in either case a kate^khumenos, analogous to
an initiate, is being consecrated thereby "really" becoming
a child of the divine Trinity. He is baptized just as Jesus was, who was
declared son of God. By receiving the Extreme Unction, an individual
has concluded the re-enactement of the life of Christ on earth.) What
actually occurs during a consecration is, of course, hidden from
everybody's view and cannot be spoken of; there is no need of prohibiting
divulgation here. (Meanwhile, watch the ancient rites of the Holy Week,
when plain water was turned into holy, efficacious, water -- for a
year's use -- by the priest's manual insertion of the Father, the Son, and the
Spirit into it -- that is, by poking the water while uttering the magic names
of the Trinity.)
(Episode 5). THE ORPHIC NURSING OF THE NEWBORN KORE
The great Orpheus was a singer of things divine, a minstrel
of the gods. His singing and playing of the LYRE was so great
that even wild animals gathered to listen to him. By his lyre, he even induced
the king of Hades to release his beloved wife, who had died of
viper's bite. (Monteverdi's opera about Orpheus and Eurydice, more than any
other opera on the subject, could be titled "The Triumph of Music.")
The descent of Orpheus to the Underworld is one of the few human descents
that were allowed in antiquity, otherwise it is the place where the
shade of a human goes or is taken upon death.
According to the inscriptions on the golden lamellae
found at Thourioi [my ancestral hometown] and other places in Magna
Graecia, people who die are instructed not to go and drink of the River
Lethe [the River of Oblivion] in Hades but to make a claim: I am a child
of the Earth and the Stars . I have
sat at Orpheus' feet, and now I claim my birthright [to reside in the heavenly
elysium]. (In Greek mythology, occasionally the gods took living humans up to
heaven, the starry sky or abode of the gods. Upon his death, Orpheus himself
ascended to heaven, according to one myth, and so did
the Greek-scripted Jesus, after he visited the Underworld
and returned from it. [The descent ad inferos is in the
Nycaean Creed, not in the Gospels.])
The lyre-playing man in the above picture is an Orphic rhapsode.
Probably he sings of immortality , as the next scene illustrates
modifiedly an Orphic inscription which in effect says: I, a kid
[goat's offspring], upon drinking fell into the vat with the milk. The
scene shows a kid standing and a female kid being nursed by a
female satyr (a goat-fitted human person). Another satyr is playing the
panpipes, which are a shepherd's instrument. So, this is a pastoral scene but a
metaphorical one. The suckling kid is a mystic who has just been
["mystically"] transformed into Kore and is a newborn Kore. The
newborn Kore is being nursed with the milk of the grain-goddess. (In the
language of Homer, a newborn kid or lamb is called Herse^ or Erse^.)
In this amazing pastoral scene, myths upon myths are compounded.
It shows a male kid (with horns) and a female kid, both called by the same name
in Greek, Eriphos. The woods may be the sacred woods, Nysa or Nyse^, where
Dionysus was brought up by nymphs. Actually Dio-nysos [Dio-: Zeus': son of
Zeus] is a god specifically named after some kind of woods.
"Dionysos" = {"Zeus' son" "Of the Woods"}.
Satyrs, of whom Silenus (whom we shall meet in a moment) is a major one,
are woodland creatures and followers of Dionysus. So, the pastoral scene in
question alludes to Demeter/Kore, Orphic, and Dionysian ideas. [In rites,
satyrs were goat attired; so, kids represent newborn satyrs. Hence,
an Orphic who identifies himself as a kid identifies himself as a newborn
satyr. The "goat's lament" in connection with a certain
Dionysiac or "satyr's play" is "trago-ode" in Greek; the
satyr's play with the lament for the death of Dionysus, of which no script
remains, is a Tragodi`a, a Tragedy.]
In the Triclinium or Pompeian Telesterion, the mystics are
probably given milk to drink or they are suckled by accomplished mystics who
had recently given birth, to the music of the Orphic rhapsode, and they
may even be treated with a brief play of Orpheus and Eurydice, for she was
allowed to return to earth (except for the blunder that the loving Orpheus
committed). On the other hand, a tragedy is being acted out in the theater...
(Episode 6). THE SEARCHING DEMETER
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Having been flogged or just threatened, the maenadic mystic runs
and cowers by her mother who, while looking at Nemesis, extends a
protective and consoling hand to her daughter. Kore has given up the
thyrsus (a phallus symbol), which is being held by an assistant. She has also
shed the clothes of bondage and dances carefreely. Upon the discovery
of his own trangression, Oedipus stripped his clothes, blinded his eyes, and
departed from his kingdom. (Hers is not a Bacchante's dance, which is more like
a Tarantella or a Pizzicata, such as they are preserved in southern
Italy. [See the 1996 movie, "Pizzicata" directed by Eduardo
Winspeare.] Hers is a graceful subdued dance such as the Apollonian Muses
or the Graces used to perform. By "music" the Greeks meant primarily
the regular rhythms of poetry. A Pizzicata is dithyrambic or Dionysiac.)
The Triclinium has become a hall for a swan-song ballet of the
mystics.
It is safe to infer from the Locri Pinakes that
there was an Eleusinian Mystery also at Locri in Calabria, but the one at
Pompei included another development -- the disavowment of the Sacred Marriage
on the part of Kore. (In one of her searches, thirsty Demeter was offered wine,
which she refused -- a foreshadowing of Kore's refusal to be
or to remain a maenad.)
(Episode 11). THE ABDUCTION
(the window)
One day, as the free and uncommitted Maiden was picking flowers
with her friends, or dancing inside her home, the earth gaped and
Aidoneus snatched her and carried her away to Hades. Death had arrived for the
beautiful and marriageable Kore.
"The Rape of Persephone" [Here the latinate
word "Rape" translates Lat. Raptus, that is, seizing/abduction,
not the Lat. Stuprum.]
fresco from Macedonia Tomb 1; 4th Cent. B.C. (at the Verginia Museum, Greece)
www.theoi.com/Khothonios/Hades.html
From Locri (Calabria, 490/450 B.C.): www.locriantica.it/
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Ratto di Persefone |
We have to imagine that in the Triclinium the curtain of the
window (formerly a gap) in the right wall is drawn open and each mystic
Kore is abducted, carried to the portico along the outside of the wall, and
taken into "Hades" through the main door of the Triclinium. By
now it was night and they enter the dark "Hades" carrying torches.
(In Eleusis, the abducted mystics are taken to Plouton's Cave, a natural
cave near the Telesterion.)
The wall above the window is barren today.
It should be painted, and probably was, with a stylized Hades
with Aidoneus and Kore and famous personalities who reside there or
who, like Orpheus, made a descent and then returned to earth. It is a scene such
as it was occasionaly painted on some large vases. So,
the scenes after the window have to do with Kore in Hades.
THE UNDERWORLD. The "Orpheus in the
Underworld" vase, an Apulian krater, 4th Cent. B.C., from Canosa:
(Episode 12) THE TOILET OF KORE BEFORE HER MARRIAGE TO
AIDONEUS
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Kore is being assisted in the grooming, while a putto (a cupid) is
holding up a mirror so that she can see herself. Or is it a small
portrait? Usually mirrors were round. Anyway, in this situation, it is the
assistant that is looking at what the putto is holding.
-- on the front wall (with the main door) --
On this wall there is a panel painted with a putto who is watching
the toilet. He pictorially complements the other putto. (The compositions of
all the scenes in the frieze are the most brilliant that any painter has
ever made.)
Older toilet scene in a tomb paitinting at Cuma (Kyme^). The lady
is holding a mirror.
marcheo.napolibeniculturali.it/percorso/nel-museo/P_RA33
_____
Death marries the Maiden -- that's the "Death and the
Maiden" theme in European cultural history.
Hades [Aidoneus] and Persephone Married (from an Apulian Krater,
4th cent. B.C.) Though already crowned, she is still holding a torch -- to tell
us she entered the kingdom of Darkness.
"Aidoneus and Persephone" enthroned (Pinax from
Locri, Calabria, ca. 480 B.C.):
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(Episode 13) PERSEPHONE AWAITING
Kore has married Aidoneus, as her wedding ring shows. Now she is
the queen of Hades and as such she is called Persephone. She sits
enthroned or on her nuptial bed, but, in her loneliness, she
is looking back and obviously longing for her return to earth as the
Maiden.
-- back to the wall on the left --
(Episode 14) ITE, MISSA EST
(the side door)
www.fotoantologia.it/foto/scheda.php?id=1525
We can imagine that after the enthronment of the mystics and the
drinking of the kukeon, the mystics now can live only with the expectation or
being reborn . So, they are dismissed from "Hades" and go home
through the side door. I cannot be sure from this photograph whether
between the main entrance and the side door there is the painting of
a mystic wearing a crown or a diadem and looking toward the side
door -- as there might be. Judging from the dress in the next
photo, there is indeed Persephone . The hazy enlargment of
the other photo shows that she is still sitting but she seems to
be turned toward the door -- ready to go out and return to the upper
world. {According to the photograph, a new mystic is being led
into the Telesterion!}
www.sights.seindal.dk/sight/722_Pompei.htlm
(A partial photograph in www.pompeiiinpictures.com shows
clearly that Persephone is still sitting on the same throne or recliner.) [I
was in Pompeii once, but at that time I did not visit the Villa of the
Mysteries or know of its existence.]
The dismissal may have taken the Latin form (as later on in the
Latin church Mass) of "ite, missa [perfecta] est," that is, "go
[home], the 'mystery' has been accomplished."
{The phrase, "ita, missa est" must have come into use
when in Rome the Mass was being said in Latin rather than Greek. The
Doxology, the Kyrie, and other Greek phrases were retained, but
apparently that dismissal phrase was not employed in the Greek rite. It was
coined by the use of a corrupted Greek word, Mysteria, whose ending sounds like
a Latin singular feminine ending. So, the verb employed in the phrase is
singular. In proper language, the phrase would be, "Ite, Mysteria
(perfecta) sunt." The dismissal phrase in the Mozarabic church is an
approximate translation of it, "Solemnia completa sunt in Domine" :
"The solemnities have been completed in the Lord." The earliest
attestation of the term " missa" is in the writing of St. Ambrosius
-- of Roman origin -- in the 4th century. It was never the Greek or Latin name
of the rite in question; the Lord's Banquet or the whole rite called "Mass
of the Faithful" was at first called the "Eukharistia" or
"Thanksgiving Rite". Then some dignitary in Rome or in Magna
Graecia must have included the "Eukharistia" in
the (pagan) Mysteries as "mysteria" -- which the Latin ear
picked as "misseria" and assimilated it to their own word
"missa" ["sent"], assimilation being a common practice of
the Romans. To this day some people translate the "missa" of the
dismissal as "sent", but this translation makes the dismissal phrase
totally meaningless. / Why was it called the Thanksgiving Rite to begin with?
Because, just before quoting Jesus' words at the Last Supper, the priest
says to God that Jesus our lord took the bread in his holy hands, raised
his eyes to Him, and "gratias agens" -- while giving thanks [to God
for the bread], he broke it and, while giving it to his disciples, he said,
"This is indeed my body...." The priest's consecration consists
really in the re-enactment of Jesus' words, which turned bread into his body.
Another name of the Mass is also incidental: Prosphora, that is, the Offering
Rite. What is exactly offered? Jesus said that this wine is his blood,
which will be given (shed) for many, for the forgiveness of sins. He
is made to speak as if anticipating the crucifixion and conceiving
his shed blood as an expiation. It is his sacrifice on the cross that was
offered to God. His disciples are given the redemptive blood to
drink./ Jesus, a Dionysian figure, bade his banquet disciples
to do these things in commemoration of him, not to change bread and wine
into His body and blood to be distributed to people for their salvation.
However, the re-enacting of the Rite, with those words, by
priests must have been recognized by some Greeks and
Magna-Graecians as the performance of Mystery Rites, the Demetric and the
Dionysiac, and thus they were unofficially called Mysteries. It was thereafter
that a re-enacting priest would consider himself an "Alter
Christus" efficaciously operating as the banquet Jesus did. The Christian
rite of initiation is the Baptism; it makes a person the immaculate son of God
by erasing the original sin, though not its Biblical consequences, such as
death, disease, and having to toil or suffer in bearing children.}
CONCLUSION
By RE-ENACTING THE LIFE OF KORE
(from germination to death), a mystic becomes an Other Kore and thus
immortal, as she will be born again. This transformation or
empowerment, by sympathetic magic, is something arcane, a mysterion
FOR US. The "world of myth" was also the world of gods and of magical
metamorphoses. The gods themselves produced things and effects magically. The
Canaanite or Biblical Gods said words, the names of things, and
fully formed things appeared, just like the armed Athena appeared from
Zeus' head. People conceived the dynamics of reality according to their dream
experiences, and they even interpreted dreams as divine revelations (as
historically late as the composition of the Gospels).
The re-enacting [that is, the Ceremony] is, if open to view (pictorially
in a way or actually as in the case of a Dionysian rite),
"theama" (exposition, spectacle), and the place where it is
exposed is "theatron"*†* -- a Greek invention.
[Peripheral Conclusion: Any person becomes an Other Christ by
undergoing Baptism, Communion, and Extreme Unction, and, as a Christ, he will
resurrect after death. Our faith would be in vain, as Paul of Tarsus said, if
Christ had not risen from death. But the "historic" Christ's
mission was, not to resurrect, but to save the children of Israel from the
fires of hell after the cataclysmic end of the world which he predicted to
occur within one generation. The "Apocalypse", written after
the unverified prophesy, postpones the end of the world at an
unknown future time and postulates the resurrection of the dead from their
tombs, not from Hades. This concept of immortality by resurrection is probably
Egyptian, neither Israelitic (since there is no from the hellish
Gehenna), nor Greek as a return from the Underworld or as a rebirth.
Strictly speaking, for the Israelites there is no other world or immortality:
They were condemned to death because of their transgression in Yahweh's planted
Garden: They yielded to the temptation of wanting to be like gods! / At
Pompeii there was also a temple for the cult of Isis, and some of the paintings
in the Villa of the Mysteries refer to the Egyptian goddess. She, daughter of
Earth and Sky, the goddess of bread and green fields, was instrumental in
resurrecting the body of the dead Osiris. The resurrecting was a matter of
recomposing the parts of the body. The tears of the Sorrowful Isis for
her brother/husband had produced the Nile River. A statue of
hers, holding or nursing her son Horus, was in Rome on
the road between St. Peter's in Vatican and St. John's in
Lateran as late as the time when Luther went to Rome, where he saw it. It had
become the model for the "Mother and Child" of
the Christians.] Let's not confuse the diverse types of immortality that
humans have conceived either by inference from some strange events and
dreams, or by identifying with persons deemed immortal.
Many of the statements I made throughout this essay, such as the
definition of a god (arrived at in the ca. 1974 "On the Origin
of the Gods"), are based upon many and diverse investigations,
studies, argumentations, and reflections I made over the years.
*†*
Dr. J's Illustrated Lectures
The
Orchestra
| Even the most primitive of Greek theaters had the most _________________ [COMMENT: The ....or |
Double-aulos [diaulos] player and lyre [lyra] player, at the
Tomb of the Leopards, Tarquinia (Etruria), ca. 480 B.C.
*** (Iakkhos)
I have dealt etymologiocally with gods related to Iakkhos
before, but now it is time to be more synthetic, though without making
the necessary elaborations such as I made before.
There is Iapetos [Ia-petos], who is a Titan in the Olympian
pantheon (turned by the Bible writers into the first of Noah's sons), and there
are the pre-historic Ionoi (or Io^noi or Iaonoi) in the pre-Shemitic Levant.
IA-/IO- is the etym of the god after whom Iapetos and the Iaonoi were
named. (I would use "Iaonoi" to distinguish them from the historical
Ionoi of Asia Minor.) [It was the progeny of Shem that commingled with the
invading Arabs, who brought their language and their gods into the Levant. The
commingling of languages is alluded to in the myth of the Tower of Babel.]
Gr. Iakkh(os) < *proto-Gr. iaF(os)/iaV(os), which > Lat.
Jou(us)/Jov- > Jou-pater [Juppiter] and the vocative Jove (or, using
the English orthography: Yoveh). [Either "ia`" or "io^e^`"
is a Greek word that now means "scream." It is said to be
of onomatopoeic origin. Indeed! Some people screamingly invoked,
"YA`" or "YAUE`", and these meaningful invocation sounds
came to mean "scream" when the invoked one was forgotten.]
Lat. Yoveh = pre-semitic Yahweh (who is attested
in the Ebla epigraphy and in the Hebrew Bible). (The Bible has two
distinct deities I have analyzed to death: the proto-Arabian/Canaanite Elohim,
who made humans in their own image [male and female], and
the Caucasian Yahveh, who sculpted a man and breathed life --
"psykhe^" -- into it).
So, the Eleusinian rites started amongst the Iaonoi of the
agricultural Levant, where the Sky-god [who thunders and rains] was IaFos
(Iakkhos) -- south-west of the Euphrates while the dry seasons were making the
Arabian desert advance [q.v.]. "de-METER" is an Ionic name. It =
Doric da-MATER, where the "da-" stands for ga-, which = ge^- =
earth. Demeter = Lat. TEllus Mater, Earth-Mother. [Gaia, Zeus, etc. are
western Greek deities. The myth of Demeter as the grain-mother confirms what I
suggested much earlier, that the Levantine Greeks, rather than the
Sumerians, initiated agriculture.]
P.S.: Lo and behold, I just found out [while exploring the etymology
of "Vesuvius"] that Zeus (the thunderer and gatherer of clouds)
had a specific epithet as a rain-god or raining sky: 'Ye^s (Hues). The
etym in question is Ye^- or Ya-, which corresponds to the Ia- of IAF-
[Iakkhos], the rain invocation (ia`), and the Yav- of Yahweh [iaue`]. The
Greek word for rain is 'YEtos (Huetos). (Rain-water was simply called Water:
Hydo^r.). So, the raining Zeus was essentially called Iacchic Zeus. [In Latin,
Juppiter was specified as Pluvius.]